“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” - George W. Bush

Monday, May 09, 2016

The occupation is illegal, the settlements are illegal, the wall is illegal, the hijacking of water resources is illegal, the treatment of Palestinians is criminal, and the insolence of the settlers and their supporters is unspeakable

What happened when famous authors went to visit hardcore Jewish settlers

Arriving aboard a tour bus, accompanied by a former Israeli machine-gunner turned human rights activist, an international delegation of pretty famous writers came to the heart of this old city to see for themselves how 850 hardcore Jewish settlers, protected by 650 young Israeli soldiers, live among 200,000 angry Palestinians.

The writers didn’t like what they saw.

The settlers didn’t like the writers much either, especially their hosts.

The Israeli military occupation is “the most grievous injustice I have seen in my life,” Michael Chabon, the American author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay,” told the Forward, a Jewish newspaper, a day after seeing Hebron.

“Liars!” the settlers shouted at the writers.

Through the summer, 25 novelists will journey to Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to gather material for a book of essays to be published by HarperCollins in June next year (and simultaneously released in a half-dozen other languages).

The book is designed to mark the 50-year anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories — and to make a political splash.

The organizers hope their words will kindle reflection, outrage, change. They think that after five decades of daily news coverage, often numbing in its narrative of stalled “peace processes” and kill-reprisal-repeat, the Israel-Palestinian conflict needs a novelist’s chops to tell old stories in new ways.

Yet on a recent morning in Hebron, the Jewish settlers weren’t waiting for the book to come out. They were ready to pan the effort now.

A gray-bearded settler driving a beater down Shuhada Street hit the brakes, honked his horn and began to shout at the group and point at Yehuda Shaul, a burly former sergeant from the Israel Defense Forces who is a founder of an anti-occupation group called Breaking the Silence.

Israel: From independence to intifada

“Don’t believe him! He’s a traitor. The Israeli army is the best in the world. Don’t believe him.” Then the settler waved and called, “Shabbat shalom!” before he sped away.

It was the first of several slightly surreal mini-encounters — all scenes in the Hebron Show, which may have felt fresh to the writers, but is a rerun. Settlers here frequently taunt tours led by left-wing activists.

So the settler children, well-schooled in the routine, surrounded Shaul and tried to block his way, being careful not to touch him (physical assault against a Jewish Israeli would have probably been stopped by the soldiers).

Instead, the children called him “fatso,” stuck their hands over the lenses of cameras carried by the journalists accompanying the writers, including The Washington Post, and gave the Breaking the Silence support staff the finger.

The book project is being led by a husband-and-wife team, novelists Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, assisted by their éminence grise, Mario Vargas Llosa. Other visiting writers include Geraldine Brooks, Colm Tóibín, Cheryl Strayed, Assaf Gavron, Rachel Kushner, Taiye Selasi and Dave Eggers (who traveled to Gaza).

The visits are controversial in Israel, in part because they are organized by Breaking the Silence, a group of current and former Israeli soldiers who oppose the occupation and do so by revealing how it looks and feels to a conscript enforcing it. Many Israelis — especially the 600,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — despise the group and its tactics, which include anonymous testimonies.

Shaul led the writers through a sterilized zone where Palestinians are forbidden to walk. The Palestinian shops were all closed, the metal doors welded shut. The vegetable and meat markets are a memory. A few Jewish children kicked a soccer ball around. Soldiers roared past in armored jeeps, and a squad with automatic rifles and body armor followed the tour on foot, mostly to keep the settler children from harassing the writers.

At one point, Chabon stopped to thank the soldiers, saying he understood they were put into a difficult situation.

One of the young soldiers, a red-haired private with an American accent, told Chabon, “I’ve read your books, actually.” He was obviously a fan.

His commanding officer told him to knock it off.

A handful of Palestinian families remain in the area immediately around the Jewish settlements of Hebron. They must enter their houses through back entrances and rooftops. They did not appear.

“Welcome to downtown Hebron,” Shaul said, stopping at an empty intersection. “This was the busiest, most lively section of the city.” He held up a “before” photograph that showed throngs of shoppers. “Now it’s a ghost town.”

Shall related the basic history of Hebron to the writers.

This is where tradition says the patriarch Abraham bought a cave to serve as a tomb for his wife, Sarah, and where she and Abraham, along with Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah, were buried. There is an ancient mosque and synagogue to mark the spot.

The Jews were marginalized but steadfast residents of Hebron for centuries, forbidden by Muslim conquerors to enter the Tomb of the Patriarchs. In 1929, an Arab mob slaughtered some 67 Jews here, mutilating their bodies. If the writers had entered the museum built by the settlers at the old Hadassah hospital here, they could have seen the photographs of the bloody stumps.

In 1967, after the Six-Day War, the Israel Defense Forces took control of Hebron and an army rabbi was the first Jew to enter the tomb in 700 years.

In 1994, an Israeli American physician named Baruch Goldstein entered the mosque and unloaded his machine gun, killing 29 Palestinians and wounding more than a hundred, until the crowd overwhelmed him and beat him to death. That event is not in the museum.

Goldstein’s grave is located a mile away in the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba. Today it is a pilgrimage site for Jewish extremists, who leave pebbles on his tombstone; the inscription praises him as a martyr with clean hands and pure heart.

The writers visited the grave. Waldman said the tomb disgusted her.

Chabon said the couple sought out an international group of writers, young and established, most neither Jewish nor Muslim, to tell the story. They didn’t seek out conservatives or liberals — but it’s fair to say the group tilts left. “There’s no way such a diverse group of writers could have an agenda,” Chabon said.

Actually, they could have quite an agenda, one of the settlers, Danny Cohen, said. He had come out to watch one of his neighbors yell at Shaul.

Cohen asked, “Do they tell you why these two blocks are closed to Arabs?” Because of Palestinian attacks (there have been many). “Did they tell you this property was owned by Jews before the massacre? They don’t tell you that there’s been Jews living here for centuries.”

Chabon tells Cohen, yes, they did tell us that.

Each writer will pursue their own research, which could be the subject of their essay. Some of the topics include: Ramallah nightlife, Palestinian football, the separation barrier, West Bank hip-hop, child inmates in Israeli prisons and military courts.

“They’ll write what they want to write,” said Waldman, author of a series of self-described “mommy-track” mystery novels and the best-selling work of nonfiction “Bad Mother.”

Waldman was born in Jerusalem, the daughter of a kibbutznik. She immigrated to Canada and then the United States as a child.

Asked whether the tours are presenting a one-sided take on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Waldman said no, not at all.

“There are not two sides to an occupation. There are two sides to a conflict, but there are not two sides to an occupation,” she said. “There are occupied and the occupiers.”

Walkman added that she wasn’t blind.

“I’m not denying the reality of terror, I’m not denying that buses blow up in Jerusalem, that there are knife attacks,” she said. “But what this book is designed to do is give the world a glimpse of what it is like to live for 50 years under a military occupation.”

The you leave the occupied lands of America? Russia leaves Crimea? Georgia? Turkey leaves Cyrus, kurdistan?When the arabs leave the Jewish lands from the river to the sea and crawl back to the lands of Arabia and GIVE the Jews Medina back?

(IraqiNews.com) Kirkuk – On Tuesday, a security source in Kirkuk Province revealed, that ISIS had burned a family of five people, including three children to death on charges of leaving the land of caliphate southwest of Kirkuk.

The source said in a statement followed by IraqiNews.com, “Today, ISIS burned a family of five people, including three children in central al-Riyad vicinity (40 km southwest of Kirkuk),” pointing out that, “ISIS members poured white oil material on the family members and burned them in public.”

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added, “ISIS committed this crime on charges of leaving the land of caliphate.”

(IraqiNews.com) Nineveh – An informed source in Nineveh Province revealed on Tuesday, that the so-called ISIS buried 45 of its members alive in the province, after fleeing from al-Bashir battles.

The source reported for IraqiNews.com, “ISIS had buried its members, who escaped from al-Bashir battles, inside one grave in Qayyarah vicinity in Nineveh Province,” pointing out that, “The escaped ISIS members were buried alive.”

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added, “ISIS buried these members after escaping from Qasbet Bashir battles in southern Kirkuk.”

Since late last year, the United States and Israel have been engaged in stubborn, nerve-wracking negotiations on a renewal of an agreement providing multi-year military assistance to Israel for the next decade. Israel is seeking a sharper boost in assistance than the United States is prepared to finance.U.S. Congressional sources have said recently that at first, Israel was asking for $4 to $5 billion per year, which over the duration of the agreement, from 2019 to 2028, amounts to up to $50 billion. The current military aid agreement between the two countries, for 2009 to 2018, is based on a memorandum of understanding signed by President George W. Bush and provides a total of $30 billion, at an average of $3 billion per year.

Political correctness and intolerance, which debilitates critical thinking, discourse and debate, has been shaping American culture for more than a generation. Throughout the seven plus years of the Obama administration, political correctness has driven domestic and foreign policy -- with disastrous results. Obama has gone beyond anyone in recent memory in assaulting the First Amendment, undermining both speech and the exercise of Christian religion. We now see among liberals and secular progressives operating in the Democrat Party an Orwellian power structure that seeks to advance a statist, socialist and globalist transformation of the U.S. by silencing opposing views through the courts, misinformation, and distortion of the truth. Call it “newspeak” as Orwell did or the successor term “doublespeak,” its purpose is the same: to shape the masses thinking and obfuscate what is really going down.

Political correctness has not only prevented development of an effective strategy to deal with Islamist terrorism. It has turned U.S. relations in the Middle East upside down. The Obama administration celebrated the ouster and replacement of Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, a long-standing U.S. ally, with Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi. A similar glee was initially expressed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the news of Muammar Gaddafi being hunted down and killed, only to be followed by increased mayhem in Libya, leading to the tragedy and humiliation of the U.S. at the hands of terrorists in Benghazi.

But for many Christians, the bridge too far was Obama’s rebuke of Israel and his end run around the U.S. Congress, in forcing through a fundamentally flawed nuclear deal with Iran. Iran is both the top exporter of hate and the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism whose longstanding primary targets are the United States (often referred to as the “big Satan”), and Israel (the “little Satan”).

Everyone recognizes that Donald Trump is a flawed candidate. His Christian supporters certainly know this as well or better than his critics. But they also recognize that sinners are all that there are to choose from and that America’s precarious position at home and abroad requires an unconventional leader with unusual characteristics -- some of which may not be aligned with a stereotypical Christian temperament.

Reuters: “No evidence of Islamist motive” as Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” goes on stabbing spree in Germany What does a jihadi have to do to get credit these days? If screaming “Allahu akbar” isn’t enough to make his motive clear, what is? Would he have to drop his knife and announce: “I follow Allah. I pledge my allegiance to the Islamic State. That is why I did what I did”? No, a […]Read in browser »

German investigators: “No indication” Muslim who screamed “Allahu akbar” while killing man had “Islamic extremist motive” “Bavaria’s top security official later said investigators had no indication so far that the suspect in the attack at the Grafing Bahnhof station…had an Islamic extremist motive. Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said the suspect apparently had psychological problems and drug issues.” There is no doubt that many Nazi concentration camp guards had psychological problems and […]Read in browser »

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Germany: Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” kills one, wounds 3 at train station, BBC says motive unclear “Some witnesses said he shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ (‘God is great’ in Arabic) but the motive for the attack is unclear.” A group of Japanese men flying airplanes bombed Pearl Harbor today. Some witnesses say that their planes bore the markings of the Japanese empire, but the motive for the attack is unclear. Also, “Allahu akbar” […]Read in browser »

Obvious case of simple urban stress and the failure of Europeans to properly kowtow to foreign sensibilities....possible workplace violence angle too....or some domestic stress....Islam being a religion of peace, as we have all been taught....

But it's too late now for the Democrats. They have to dance with Clinton through the general election, and if the last 28 months of trends are any indication, the next six months are not going to be pretty.

If Trump continues to hammer away relentlessly on Clinton, we could see the largest electoral landslide in modern American history, even larger than Ronald Reagan's 1984 crushing of Walter Mondale and Richard Nixon's 1972 embarrassment of George McGovern.

As Sanders wins yet another primary (the 19th overall), it might be useful to examine what a Sanders-Trump match-up might entail.

It starts with understanding that the 2016 race is fueled primarily with the devastation caused by runaway inequality and the financial strip-mining of the economy by Wall Street.

Americans are fed up with wage stagnation and the ever increasing rise of the pay gap between CEOs and the rest of us. In 1980 an average top 100 CEO received $45 in compensation compared to $1 for the average worker. Today it is an incomprehensible $844 to one, (as in one house for you and 844 houses for a top CEO.)

This system runs on an idealized vision of capitalism called neoliberalism. That model continually calls for tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of the private sector, and cutbacks/privatization of any and all public services. Both political parties have endorsed this model. But now the American people are in revolt as they see the economy, their communities and their families undermined by Wall Street.

On the right, Trump supporters blame their losses on immigrants, big government and people of color. They revel in the way Trump bashes the established order with his Mexico wall, his ban on Muslim immigrants, and his overall assault on political correctness, meaning his overt appeals to racism, sexism and xenophobia.

Sanders attacks runaway inequality directly by calling for the break up of big banks, new taxes on Wall Street, free higher education and Medicare-for-All. He wants to move money from financial and corporate elites into the real economy so that it benefits working people and the poor.

Meanwhile, Hillary is part and parcel of the runaway inequality regime. Her Wall Street speeches, her Super-PACs, her corporate donors, and her family’s new found wealth will make it hard to shed her links to those who have created, and profited by, the rigged economy.

Should Sanders somehow become the nominee, here are ten reasons why he has a much better chance of defeating Trump than Hillary.

What about Bernie’s vulnerabilities?It is never wise to underestimate a carnival barker named Trump. An October surprise in the form of a terrorist attack on U.S. could make him look like the strongman needed to keep us safe.

If Trump faced Bernie it would be all about Bernie the Red. Trump would play his capitalist billionaire success against the socialist who wants to rob Americans of their drive for success and their chance to win big in the capitalist sweepstake, (just like Trump did with only a million dollars of seed money from his Dad.)

But does 1950s red-baiting still work? Bernie proudly admits he’s a democratic socialist. No one knows for sure how this would play out, but so far it hasn’t cost him very much in the primaries. Further, the latest poll from New Hampshire, a neighboring state that is much more conservative than Vermont and knows all about Sanders, has him up over Trump by 21 percentage points, while Hillary leads Trump by only 5 percent. This suggest that Sanders ages well. The more voters know about him, the more they like him. Bad news for Trump’s anti-red attacks.

Big government and big spending are also potential vulnerabilities in a general election. Pro-Hillary think tanks are coming out with study after study to undermine ideas like free higher education and Medicare-for-All. Bernie’s response is to ask why so many other developed nations can afford these universal proposals. It’s a good question. But, the anti-government sentiment may run deeper in America. This is always a dangerous area for any progressive who calls for more government programs.

And finally, there is good old anti-Semitism. It’s possible that about 10 percent of the electorate might not vote for a Jewish candidate. What about a Jewish candidate who isn’t entirely in lockstep with everything that Israel does or wants? Well, that could cost him some more votes among Jewish conservatives, and of course, evangelicals who hope that Israel starts Armageddon.

Why raise all these issues when Bernie’s chances are so slim?Because it’s not over yet. There’s a lot of time between now and the convention and things can happen, especially around her Wall Street speech transcripts.

There’s more than enough time for Hillary supporters and super-delegates to take a deep breath and think hard about the frightening scenario of a Clinton versus Trump race.

So, Rufus, you think that anyone who elects to vote conservative or Republican, or opposite you, for that matter, is a racist?

By the way, the fastest growing demographics in this country today are people on government handouts which equates to a modern day slavery scenario. It is a barracoon busting at the seams. The Dims should be very proud of themselves.

"The cause of Hawaii and independence is larger and dearer than the life of any man connected with it. Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station." - Lili`uokalani, Hawaii's last Queen

"This is a historical issue, based on a relationship between an independent government and the United States of America, and what has happened since and the steps that we need to take to make things right." - Republican Governor Linda Lingle, January 2003

"The recovery of Hawaiian self-determination is not only an issue for Hawaii, but for America. ... let all of us, Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian, work toward a common goal. Let us resolve ... to advance a plan for Hawaiian sovereignty." - Democratic Governor Ben Cayetano1998 State of the State Address

Originally populated by the aboriginal Taíno people, the island was claimed in 1493 by Christopher Columbus for the Kingdom of Spain, enduring several invasion attempts by the French, Dutch, and British. During the four centuries of Spanish rule, the island's cultural and physical landscapes were transformed, with European knowledge, customs, and traditions being introduced, especially Roman Catholicism and the Spanish language. In 1898, following the Spanish–American War, Spain ceded the island to the United States under the terms of the Treaty of Paris.

Puerto Rico does not have a vote in the U.S. Congress, which governs the territory with full jurisdiction under the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950. As a U.S. territory, American citizens residing on the island are "disenfranchised at the national level" and may not vote for the President and Vice President of the United States.[16] However, Congress approved a local constitution, allowing US citizens on the territory to elect a governor.

The Chamorros, Guam's indigenous people, settled the island approximately 4,000 years ago.

The United States took control of the island in the 1898 Spanish–American War, as part of the Treaty of Paris. Guam was transferred to U.S. Navy control on 23 December 1898 by Executive Order 108-A. Guam came to serve as a station for American ships traveling to and from the Philippines, while the Northern Mariana Islands passed to Germany, and then to Japan.[10] A U.S. Navy yard was established at Piti in 1899, and a marine barracks at Sumay in 1901.[13]:13 Following the Philippine–American War, Emilio Aguinaldo and Apolinario Mabini were exiled on Guam in 1901.[14]:vi

You forget the big difference, WiO, the U.S. had the balls to admit what we were doing.

Israel didn't. They still refuse to say that they have effectively annexed the West Bank, Gaza, parts of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Until they admit it, under international law, they are an occupying force.

The Israeli position considers Jerusalem – both western and eastern– the country's eternal, undivided capital based on its historical, religious and political claims to the holy city. Since Israel's reunification of Jerusalem in 1967, following 19 years of division during which Israeli Jews were excluded from the eastern part, the government through successive administrations has vowed never to re-divide the city again. In 1980, the Israeli Knesset passed a Basic Law declaring reunified Jerusalem the eternal capital of Israel, while providing for freedom of access to each religion's holy sites.

In 1980, Israel unilaterally declared all of Jerusalem, both its eastern and western sectors, to be its undivided capital, while formally disavowing that its incorporation constituted annexation. East Jerusalem's status in international law however remains uncertain: the United Nations' Security Council immediately dismissed the resolution of unification as a "violation of international law",[10] and the international community does not recognize Israel's or Palestinian sovereignty there.[11]

Like I said. Until Israel admits that they annexed East Jerusalem, I'll call it anything I want.

At least in the sense of grandpa and grandma and the aunts and uncles right over there in those other tepees...Joseph Campbell wasn't the first, and won't be the last, to point out the special relationships between gramps and grams and the aunts and uncles and the young uns...

Youth like having the elders around.

It's a good thing more than a bad, in my view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAclx7OuuiQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awzNHuGqoMc

Always be humble and kindWhen you get where you're goin'Turn around, and help the next one in line....Always be humble and kind

“Isis is an idea, not the first of its kind and not the last of its kind,” said a powerful security official when I visited Iraq last month. Indeed, as the international community boasts of Isis’s demise, the jihadists struck a Shia district in Baghdad today, killing at least 63 people and wounding 80 in a series of devastating market bombings.

Officials say that Isis has lost almost half its territory in Iraq and more than 20% in Syria. It is true that Isis leaders are being eliminated and its infrastructure devastated. But while Isis may be losing the territories it governs, today’s attack (and others over the past months) is a reminder that it is still able to commit atrocities across Iraq, and continue to operate as it has done for more than a decade.

In other words, a world without Isis is unlikely to come any time soon. Isis thrives off the lack of institutions in weak or failed states. Remedying this requires good governance, institution-building and the reconciliation of divided communities. But rehabilitating Iraq’s cities and people will prove to be far more costly and challenging than defeating Isis itself. Sectarian tensions, dysfunctional governance and regional polarisation have worsened since Isis came on the scene, factors that precipitated the group’s rise in the first place.

The timing of today’s attack in the Sadr City district was more than just a coincidence. It comes a week after popular demonstrations were mobilised by the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters stormed the parliament in protest at the lack of reform in the country, corruption and sectarian politics.

This highly symbolic attack by Isis aims to nullify that push for reform while provoking reprisals from a Shia population who have exercised great restraint during the course of the war on Isis – despite repeated sectarian atrocities. The Shia community has plenty of its own men with guns and resources, and is susceptible to the same trap it fell into in 2006, when al-Qaida in Iraq struck a sacred Shia shrine and ignited a sectarian civil war that took the country to the brink.

The proliferation of Shia militia groups since 2003, during the course of the war on Isis in particular (with acquiescence from the US), has worsened Iraq’s problems. They are heavily armed, challenge the state and have committed sectarian atrocities against Iraq’s Sunnis. They create the space that allows Isis to flourish, and Iraq cannot survive if power reverts to the patrimonial networks based on sect and tribe that allow unaccountable Shia militias to operate.

Iraq can be stabilised, as happened between 2008 and 2011. But that required more than 100,000 US and UK troops acting as a buffer between warring militants, and providing the Iraqi state with the security and intelligence capabilities that it so desperately needs today. Iraq also has on its side the ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shia clergyman in the world who acts as a force for moderation.

Sistani, however, may have withdrawn from the campaign for reform out of frustration with Iraq’s ruling elites. As Iraq further descends into sectarian violence and political turmoil, with the continued prominence of Isis and the rise of sub-state actors such as Shia militias, the restoration of the Iraqi state and society will be difficult, if not impossible.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.